Icepick - Eli, who was born two weeks before my father, is still around. And he was awesome as Tuco. Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
And Trooper once again nails it - Costner was great in The Big Chill - he nailed that part.
Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
Yeah, but different characters types, so who's counting?
I'm new to Breaking Bad. I started watching it with the Friday night marathons they started a couple of months ago. I STILL haven't seen the first five or six episodes. (The first episode I have seen is the one with the mercury fulminate.)
All I can say is WOW! What a show! I just finished off watching season 4 at 4:30 in the morning today. I couldn't stop watching. Season four must have been murder to watch when it first aired - I wanted to go immediately to the next episode when I was watching it last night. Waiting a week would have been torture.
Tonight I'm going to have to discipline myself to just watch two episodes of season five - I'm on Daddy Duty tomorrow and I have to have the energy to chase my three year-old. It's gonna be tough, but I'll stop at two....
Well the best part about it being almost 200 comments is that it's been done without anybody slinging shit at anyone else.
I mean, other than ed slinging poo at Clint Eastwood. LOL.
That's your view.
All I did was say I liked him better as Mr Yates and never got into his cinematography.
Sixty Grit said...
Icepick - Eli, who was born two weeks before my father, is still around. And he was awesome as Tuco. Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
No, he was at his best as Calvera, a bad guy with a twist in "The Magnificent Seven".
He saw himself as a professional, something of a craftsman.
I mean, other than ed slinging poo at Clint Eastwood. LOL.
That's your view.
All I did was say I liked him better as Mr Yates and never got into his cinematography.
You know, when people put "LOL" or ":)" in posts that's a give away that they're kidding with you. That's why I put it in there--so it would be obvious.
The only thing wrong with [Red River] is it suffers from Hawks' great flaw, as he himself acknowledged - he could never understand a woman who didn't like to go hunting and fishing, to do the same things men do.
Maybe that explains Joanne Dru's taking the arrow in the shoulder, er, like a man -- here starting at about the 1:00 mark.
What's fascinating to me is the power of the cowboy and western iconic mythology. It represents just a few decades of history in one small sparsely populated corner of the world. If you consider it to be primarily the period after the civil war ended, the factual basis didn't even involve any major wars. The whole thing consists of people dealing with relatively small disputes and interpersonal drama on a back drop of an imposing and beautiful natural environment. That such intimate drama would so captivate the world is a singular phenomenon in history, I think. In a smaller way, the gangster era is similar. America is compelling no matter who you are.
I suppose the timing of the phenomenon of movies and their heavy use of westerns for story is part of it, but the mythology had to be special for that to work as well as it did. It's not what you would expect to win over audiences. It's mostly dirty men, in desolate lonely circumstance with very little in the way of grand or impressive cities or cultural tapestry. It's scroungy little towns on the edge of nowhere with greedy brutal men scrambling for a leg up on survival with the outside chance of riches or normalcy. It's kind of like pirate mythology in that way.
This has been a great discussion of Westerns. I've seen a lot of them, but nowhere as complete a list as Trooper. His knowledge is fantastic, and, frankly, he's inspired me to do a lot more Western-watching than I've bothered with in a long time.
I want to tell you a story about real life and movies, though.
I'm old. I'm about 10 or 12 years older than Trooper. I was born in L.A. just after the War. When I was a baby, we moved to Barstow (in the Mojave desert), where my father had his first assignment as a new California Highway Patrolman.
An old sergeant in the office there (they don't call them "barracks," as they do for, say, Massachusetts State Troopers), who took my father under his wing, was a guy named Walt Terry. Terry was one of the oldest Highway Patrolmen at the time, having been a member of the original force when it was organized in 1938.
Walt Terry in fact boarded with us for a while, and was my father's mentor in all things CHP. Terry had a colorful past, and, despite his age, continued in law enforcement until the early '70's, when he retired as a Deputy Coroner for San Bernardino County. One of Terry's claims to fame was that he had been Wyatt and Josie Earp's houseboy in Hollywood in the '20's. He worked for the Earps, doing odd jobs and taking care of them, starting when he was 14.
I recall very clearly when I was 5, old Walt sitting at the dining table after dinner sipping coffee, while my mother set up the sewing machine to work on some shirts, and his telling us what Wyatt Earp said about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
The long and short of it is the only movie or TV show I've ever seen that came close to his description was the movie "Tombstone." It may have been a mess otherwise, but it got the atmospherics right, and it got the O.K. Corral and its aftermath right. And, to recap, I'm saying that as someone who heard the story from someone who heard it from Wyatt Earp.
Plus, Dana Delany (be still my heart), although a little too pretty and not crazy enough to be the original, was an inspired choice for Josie.
I stand corrected. Jack Palance was not the villain in High Noon. It was Lee Van Cleef, and he wasn't even the leader of the bad guys. But my point still stands: if Lee Van Cleef wants to kill you, fear is an appropriate response. If Montgomery Clift comes gunning for you, it's not necessary to round up a posse or leave town......I can't remember much about Apaloosa, but I do remember Brando knocking over a table and calling the bad guy "a scum sucking pig". If I can still remember it, it must have been an effective scene. However Brando just doesn't make it as a western hero. He's all about internal conflicts and trying to overcome his own contradictions. That's not how the west was won.
I stand corrected. Jack Palance was not the villain in High Noon. It was Lee Van Cleef, and he wasn't even the leader of the bad guys. But my point still stands: if Lee Van Cleef wants to kill you, fear is an appropriate response. If Montgomery Clift comes gunning for you, it's not necessary to round up a posse or leave town......I can't remember much about Apaloosa, but I do remember Brando knocking over a table and calling the bad guy "a scum sucking pig". If I can still remember it, it must have been an effective scene. However Brando just doesn't make it as a western hero. He's all about internal conflicts and trying to overcome his own contradictions. That's not how the west was won.
I like westerns. They are just awesome. What else can you say? Two of my all time favorite movies are Unforgiven and Tombstone. The Wyatt and Josie relationship was great. Romantic, in a soul mate kind of way, but also very believable and perfect for the time period.
It must have been very strange to live as someone like Wyatt Earp, who was a mythical figure in a time that seemed far away from where he later lived his life. He lived in two different centuries, but in a way that really was as different as that sounds. That must have been the experience of many who were young in the late 1800s and still around in the 1900s.
"We tend to think of the "Old West" as being mid to late 1800s, forgetting the fact that it extended well past the turn of the century."
True, but the "Wild" west was over in the 1890's The Indians were tamed, and an outlaw had little chance of escaping justice for long. New towns weren't popping up anymore, and the place was getting predictable. People still lived the same lifestyle in many places, but it just wasn't "wild" any longer. Johnny Law had won the west.
BTW, I can tell from the complete silence regarding the Vandal's song in the front page video that everyone is aware of the lyrical reference to "Zubie's" in Costa Mesa.
I always liked High Plains Drifter. Not a Ford classic, but it is refreshing that Clint Eastwood responds to rudeness by a bar girl by taking her in the barn and raping her in the hay (and having the midget watch was just the right touch).
"High Plains Drifter" is all about a ghost that comes back and is evil to cowardly evil people.
Its as if Will Kane was killed by Frank Miller and came back and raped Katy Jurado, burned down the church, and killed Thomas Mitchell and Lloyd Bridges.
There was a crappy movie with James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Bruce Willis as Tom Mix about just the period that Tim was talking about. It was called "Sunset" and was very poorly done.
A great movie could be made from that material.
Wyatt Earp and especially his last wife Josie were tireless self promoters. There were many a gunman and ex-lawmen who had much more compelling stories.
Bill Tilghman was had a much more compelling story as a lawman and gunman was a contemporary of Earp in Hollywood in those days. He made a few movies but never became anywhere near as famous as Earp. He went back to law enforcement and was the marshal of rough town until he was shot down in the line of duty. He died with his boots on at the age of 70 when he was gunned down by a corrupt Prohibition agent.
A lame TV movie was made about his life starring Sam Elliot.
I always thought his life would make an amazing movie.
If I got the chance to make a movie Western it would be the life of Langford "Farmer" Peel who was a soldier, lawman and gunman. Check out his life story. It would make a hell of a movie.
John Ford always said that if he ever told the truth about Earp nobody would have gone to the movie.
In fact Earp was a gambler and a pimp. As were most of the famous gunfighters and lawmen of the Old West. They couldn't tell the true stories if they were going to make a movie.
"Tombstone" got a lot of the story right but glossed over the fact that the Earps were pimps. The elder brother James was the main culprit but all of the brothers but their woman out on the stroll at one time or another. It is hinted at in "Tombstone" but never made explicit.
If you think life is unfair, wait till you see posterity......I think Hollywood was attracted to the Earps, the James, and Billy the Kid not despite their flaws but because of them. It was always thus.. In the Iliad, Homer gives the best lines not to Hector but Achilles. The only WWII general who got the star treatment was Patton, and he was a total dick. Show me a hero,and I'll show you a dull movie.
The thing of it is that Hollywood would have such a more complex and interesting story if they told the whole thing.
Wyatt Earp was a lot more like Al Swearengen than Hugh O'Brien. But that was too complex for Hollywood back in the day. That is why "Tombstone" missed a bet.
"Tombstone," as I say, was good on atmospherics, and, yes, it hinted. But do you expect it to tell the "whole" story? You'd have no movie.
Look, my whole family were cops in California. Real, actual cops, back in the day. And everybody knew about the "real" old West, because there still were still characters like Walt Terry hanging around in the 40's and 50's. I recall his stories about how tight the Earps were, and how they were a couple of weird, old, sick people, afraid of anyone finding out things, and keeping boxes locked and hidden and moving from place to place. That was the reality at the end: Old weirdos trying to sell stories of their youth to Hollywood while still scared of being found out.
But the gunfight at the O.K. Corral made a great story because it was a set-piece battle. That's about it. And Wyatt Earp was brave and tough on several occasions when he had to be, and was an impressive character in real life. He may not have deserved the attention, but, given the new world of more professional law enforcement and his controversial, checkered past, he was not going to settle into some nice job with a pension. He HAD to be a self-promoter out of sheer desperation. Hollywood bought it, because it was for sale. Other, better, braver lawmen existed, but they were not packaging their stories. They were out being lawmen and maybe getting killed. And meanwhile, Wyatt Earp was beating them as a pitchman.
Well I don't know. A TV series would be best and deal with the life and Times of Dodge City as it really happened. That was what Deadwood was and it was great viewing and great TV.
The Western is not dead. It is just not as dominant as it was earlier in the evolution of Hollywood. Much like film nior detective stories it is a genre that it out of style. But it can make a comeback in the right hands.
Hollywood doesn't make Westerns because of the foreign markets. It gets more than 60% of its Box office from overseas. And Westerns have always -relatively speaking - done poorly in foreign markets.
Plus a lot of people in Hollywood were never simpatico with westerns. Too "Middle America" not sexy or cynical or hip enough.
But in order to have a good Western, you have to have good actors who can play men. And today we have too many prissy boys. There are a handful of guys, but not many. And a lot of the character actors are gone.
You know, the interesting thing here is that I never said Wyatt Earp WASN'T a crook. I assumed most people knew he wasn't some shining hero. The blurry line between crook and lawman I thought was pretty obvious in "Tombstone." The whole thing had this confused, messy background of ambiguity. One of the big gripes about the movie was that it had too many story lines and too many unclear characters as it was. It was obvious to me, and part of its appeal, that it managed to be so ambiguous about the Earps. No, it didn't tell the whole story. But it got a lot of the details right, more than any other movie I know. And it didn't paint them as plaster saints, overly hagiographic as it may have been in Wyatt's case.
And, yes, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened about like that, even though I'm sure there were many other gunfights in the same year involving honest and brave lawmen, whose stories of six-shooters and moral uplift would better serve to improve the public if only they were known.
Actually very few of the lawmen were these moral paragons that you see depicted on TV or in the older movies.
Most of them were on the other side of the law a time or two.
I think the heroic nature of Wyatt Earp is too ingrained in the public consciousness to be dinged by anything but a very explicit depiction of how bad he really was in real life. The TV show and movies like "My Darling Clementine" and "Gunfight at the Ok Carroll" are the dominant vision of the Earp Clan.
I think the life story of your friend would make a pretty cool movie.
I have about ten great westerns in my head that I could make that might be pretty damn good. About characters as diverse as Farmer Peel, Buckskin Frank Leslie, Sam Bass and most of all Hill Loftis who lived until 1929 and was a hell of a badman.
You make a great point Bender. There are very, very few actors who would be credible in a Western. Well at least big name actors. I would go with character guys like Sam Peckinpah did. The equivalent of Warren Oates and Robert Ryan and L Q Jones. And the occasional star long past his prime like William Holden.
Ha ha ha ha that clip Mamie linked I couldn't even watch it beyond "Why you mad?"
They're being attacked by indians, she's shooting high, know it, still shoots high, wastes ammo, wastes time, wastes energy, loses focus, draws attention to herself, "Come on, tell me why you're mad." Ha ha ha ha ha ha, that really captures the female pioneer spirit that won the West, "Why you so mad?" In the middle of a gunfight, ha ha ha ha ha
But in order to have a good Western, you have to have good actors who can play men. And today we have too many prissy boys. There are a handful of guys, but not many. And a lot of the character actors are gone.
Not that he makes westerns, but that's one of the best things about the movies Rob Zombie makes--he uses 'real' people--that is, people with deep lines and creases, people that actually look like they've lived some.
I said above in reference to "Tombstone" that "...it got a lot of the details right, more than any other movie I know."
I meant "more than any WESTERN I know."
There are plenty of other movies set in the past with scrupulous attention to detail. But "Tombstone" is the only Western movie I've seen that did such a good job with its Victorian setting. They also did their research about the gunfights in the movie, so what's on the screen bears at least a vague resemblance to the externals of what happened, secretive scumbaggery of characters involved excepted.
And I agree with Icepick. It IS a different country.
If you're as old as I am, the Eisenhower Administration of my childhood might as well have been on another planet.
Despite computerization and digital gizmos everywhere, the basic technology hasn't changed as much as it did, say, in the 50 years between 1870 and 1920. We still have similar houses to the 60's, and cars have changed a lot, but not as much as between a horse-and-carriage and a Chevrolet. And we have color TVs, radio, telephones and jet planes. Those have been upgraded and extended, but the basics have been with us for a while.
No, what's changed is the people. And THAT is a whole long other story of both good and bad that I have to ignore for the sake of
About six years or so ago, my brother and I made a trip to Tombstone, Arizona for about a week. Great time. The town itself is set up as a living museum of sorts, sort of an old West Williamsburg. A number of original buildings, markers where important events happened, like "here is where Curly Bill shot Sheriff White".
It's also 1950s hokey at times--there's a mechanical diorama that is a wonder at mid-20th century entertainment. But still fun, plus the surrounding country makes for great hiking and history exploring. Went down to Bisbee for a tour of a copper mine. Went over to Fort Apache where Geronimo surrendered.
The history there gives a bit of the neat and tidy at times, but there's a lot of honesty about the Earps. They were opportunists but had a very Western sort of understanding of justice. Lines are blurry, but that doesn't mean there is no good or evil. The Newspaper accounts at the time, Republican paper for the Earps, Democrat for their opposition, is fascinating for their coverage of the same event with entirely different lens of the action and the people.
The biography by Casey Tefertiller makes for a great read.
Ever notice that the hemlines of togas in gladiator movies varies in length according to the era in which the movie was shot. Thus so with grittiness in the Old West. When I was a kid, I remember Hopalong Cassidy would pony up to the bar and order saspirila. If some prick in a black hat gave him a hard time, Hoppie would quick draw and shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. That's the Old West I remember. And, compared to Roy Rogers, Hopalong was a dark, tormented figure........I think the characters and plots were all in imitation of Tom Mix movies. And Tom Mix really had been a cowboy in the Old West. The stories and characters probably weren't historically accurate, but they were true to what they wanted to believe about themselves.......I think Swearingen's evil is as much a fantasy as Hopalong's purity, but it says something about us that we're more attracted to it and think it more credible.
One way to get a feel for the rough edges of the time is to read O. Henry's early Texas stories. The Earps, in their way, could have come straight out of an O. Henry tale.
And I just bought Casey Tefertiller's AThe Life Behind the Legend for my Kindle. Thanks for mentioning it. I remember thinking it might be interesting when it first came out, but I've forgotten about it until now. And of course now, Amazon makes it REAL easy to spend that $10.23 to have it at my fingertips to read at lunchtime ;-)
David Atkins did not die until 1967, and David Atkins was a genuine longrider and western badman. Rode with the Ketchum brothers and knew Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in their New Mexico days.
The Ox-Bow Incident is one of the all time commie movies.
Broken Arrow was a lot of fun. Especially with the woefully miscast Jeff Chandler as Cochise. That is right up there with John Wayne being cast as Genghis Kahn.
Ok, so I didn't know who Elfago Baca was and it was off to wiki --
One often told story says that once when he was practicing law in Albuquerque, Baca received a telegram from a client in El Paso, Texas. "Need you at once," it said, "Have just been charged with murder." To which Baca is supposed to have responded with a telegram saying, "Leaving at once with three eyewitnesses."
PaddyO, I always drive near Tombstone when I'm driving to San Diego in January. I've heard mixed reviews. Based on your take I'll plan on visiting in January. It's only ~25 miles or so out of the way.
292 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 292 of 292It smells very musky and manly in here.
NTTIAWWT
So you weren't talking about Ensign Ro from Star Trek TNG?
I was not. But start a geek thread on ST and maybe I will.
Icepick - Eli, who was born two weeks before my father, is still around. And he was awesome as Tuco. Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
And Trooper once again nails it - Costner was great in The Big Chill - he nailed that part.
I was not. But start a geek thread on ST and maybe I will.
I uh...I never watched it. I don't know who Ensign Ro is.
I uh...I never watched it. I don't know who Ensign Ro is.
Just as well. A minor character who was yet another exhibit in Star Fleet's failure.
Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
Yeah, but different characters types, so who's counting?
I'm new to Breaking Bad. I started watching it with the Friday night marathons they started a couple of months ago. I STILL haven't seen the first five or six episodes. (The first episode I have seen is the one with the mercury fulminate.)
All I can say is WOW! What a show! I just finished off watching season 4 at 4:30 in the morning today. I couldn't stop watching. Season four must have been murder to watch when it first aired - I wanted to go immediately to the next episode when I was watching it last night. Waiting a week would have been torture.
Tonight I'm going to have to discipline myself to just watch two episodes of season five - I'm on Daddy Duty tomorrow and I have to have the energy to chase my three year-old. It's gonna be tough, but I'll stop at two....
Never seen it. Never cared to.
It is a great show, written with a very deliberate manipulation of the audience as part of the premise.
Also, it shows what El Pollos Hermans Raylan could accomplish if he went over to the dark side.
CEO-MMP said...
Well the best part about it being almost 200 comments is that it's been done without anybody slinging shit at anyone else.
I mean, other than ed slinging poo at Clint Eastwood. LOL.
That's your view.
All I did was say I liked him better as Mr Yates and never got into his cinematography.
Sixty Grit said...
Icepick - Eli, who was born two weeks before my father, is still around. And he was awesome as Tuco. Better than the Tuco in Breaking Bad, which, starts soon, by the way.
No, he was at his best as Calvera, a bad guy with a twist in "The Magnificent Seven".
He saw himself as a professional, something of a craftsman.
Also, it shows what El Pollos Hermans Raylan could accomplish if he went over to the dark side.
He has talked recently about wanting to be a "teacher", wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
It is a great show, written with a very deliberate manipulation of the audience as part of the premise.
Also, it has the best "Straighten my tie and gather my composure" scene EVER.
I mean, other than ed slinging poo at Clint Eastwood. LOL.
That's your view.
All I did was say I liked him better as Mr Yates and never got into his cinematography.
You know, when people put "LOL" or ":)" in posts that's a give away that they're kidding with you.
That's why I put it in there--so it would be obvious.
Still didn't take though.
The tie straightening scene in question: WARNING! NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!
eddie wrote "No, he was at his best as Calvera, a bad guy with a twist in "The Magnificent Seven"."
He was very good in that movie.
But what you wrote in no way changes what I wrote.
"Appaloosa" with Commie Ed Harris is surprisingly good - "Appaloosa" with Brando circa 1965 - is awful.
Most Miscast in a Western:
Rock Hudson as "Cochise"
Audrey Hepburn as an Indian Half-breed and sister of Audey Murphy.
However, George Kennedy WAS Sarge
After 200 Comments and No 'Blazing Saddles'?
I Shoot With This Hand.
Randolph Scott.
Mongo Like Candy.
The Best Western that Dom DeLuise Ever Was In, Minus the Hotel Chain of the Same Name.
The only thing wrong with [Red River] is it suffers from Hawks' great flaw, as he himself acknowledged - he could never understand a woman who didn't like to go hunting and fishing, to do the same things men do.
Maybe that explains Joanne Dru's taking the arrow in the shoulder, er, like a man -- here starting at about the 1:00 mark.
Gee, Montgomery Clift was cute.
'Blazing Saddles' - funniest Western. Loved Slim Pickens and Harvey Korman.
What's fascinating to me is the power of the cowboy and western iconic mythology. It represents just a few decades of history in one small sparsely populated corner of the world. If you consider it to be primarily the period after the civil war ended, the factual basis didn't even involve any major wars. The whole thing consists of people dealing with relatively small disputes and interpersonal drama on a back drop of an imposing and beautiful natural environment. That such intimate drama would so captivate the world is a singular phenomenon in history, I think. In a smaller way, the gangster era is similar. America is compelling no matter who you are.
Costner was great in "The Big Chill." The best acting he had ever done.
Ugh. Costner was a stiff in The Big Chill.
I suppose the timing of the phenomenon of movies and their heavy use of westerns for story is part of it, but the mythology had to be special for that to work as well as it did. It's not what you would expect to win over audiences. It's mostly dirty men, in desolate lonely circumstance with very little in the way of grand or impressive cities or cultural tapestry. It's scroungy little towns on the edge of nowhere with greedy brutal men scrambling for a leg up on survival with the outside chance of riches or normalcy. It's kind of like pirate mythology in that way.
Ro Laren was no Kira Nerys. Glad she turned down the posting at DS 9.
Then again, Kira was no Jadzia Dax.
Love them spots. And they go all the way down.
This has been a great discussion of Westerns. I've seen a lot of them, but nowhere as complete a list as Trooper. His knowledge is fantastic, and, frankly, he's inspired me to do a lot more Western-watching than I've bothered with in a long time.
I want to tell you a story about real life and movies, though.
I'm old. I'm about 10 or 12 years older than Trooper. I was born in L.A. just after the War. When I was a baby, we moved to Barstow (in the Mojave desert), where my father had his first assignment as a new California Highway Patrolman.
An old sergeant in the office there (they don't call them "barracks," as they do for, say, Massachusetts State Troopers), who took my father under his wing, was a guy named Walt Terry. Terry was one of the oldest Highway Patrolmen at the time, having been a member of the original force when it was organized in 1938.
Walt Terry in fact boarded with us for a while, and was my father's mentor in all things CHP. Terry had a colorful past, and, despite his age, continued in law enforcement until the early '70's, when he retired as a Deputy Coroner for San Bernardino County. One of Terry's claims to fame was that he had been Wyatt and Josie Earp's houseboy in Hollywood in the '20's. He worked for the Earps, doing odd jobs and taking care of them, starting when he was 14.
I recall very clearly when I was 5, old Walt sitting at the dining table after dinner sipping coffee, while my mother set up the sewing machine to work on some shirts, and his telling us what Wyatt Earp said about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
The long and short of it is the only movie or TV show I've ever seen that came close to his description was the movie "Tombstone." It may have been a mess otherwise, but it got the atmospherics right, and it got the O.K. Corral and its aftermath right. And, to recap, I'm saying that as someone who heard the story from someone who heard it from Wyatt Earp.
Plus, Dana Delany (be still my heart), although a little too pretty and not crazy enough to be the original, was an inspired choice for Josie.
We tend to think of the "Old West" as being mid to late 1800s, forgetting the fact that it extended well past the turn of the century.
I stand corrected. Jack Palance was not the villain in High Noon. It was Lee Van Cleef, and he wasn't even the leader of the bad guys. But my point still stands: if Lee Van Cleef wants to kill you, fear is an appropriate response. If Montgomery Clift comes gunning for you, it's not necessary to round up a posse or leave town......I can't remember much about Apaloosa, but I do remember Brando knocking over a table and calling the bad guy "a scum sucking pig". If I can still remember it, it must have been an effective scene. However Brando just doesn't make it as a western hero. He's all about internal conflicts and trying to overcome his own contradictions. That's not how the west was won.
I stand corrected. Jack Palance was not the villain in High Noon. It was Lee Van Cleef, and he wasn't even the leader of the bad guys. But my point still stands: if Lee Van Cleef wants to kill you, fear is an appropriate response. If Montgomery Clift comes gunning for you, it's not necessary to round up a posse or leave town......I can't remember much about Apaloosa, but I do remember Brando knocking over a table and calling the bad guy "a scum sucking pig". If I can still remember it, it must have been an effective scene. However Brando just doesn't make it as a western hero. He's all about internal conflicts and trying to overcome his own contradictions. That's not how the west was won.
I like westerns. They are just awesome. What else can you say? Two of my all time favorite movies are Unforgiven and Tombstone. The Wyatt and Josie relationship was great. Romantic, in a soul mate kind of way, but also very believable and perfect for the time period.
It must have been very strange to live as someone like Wyatt Earp, who was a mythical figure in a time that seemed far away from where he later lived his life. He lived in two different centuries, but in a way that really was as different as that sounds. That must have been the experience of many who were young in the late 1800s and still around in the 1900s.
About that fearsome Lee Van Cleef -- he started out as an accountant.
Ooh, scary!
"We tend to think of the "Old West" as being mid to late 1800s, forgetting the fact that it extended well past the turn of the century."
True, but the "Wild" west was over in the 1890's The Indians were tamed, and an outlaw had little chance of escaping justice for long. New towns weren't popping up anymore, and the place was getting predictable. People still lived the same lifestyle in many places, but it just wasn't "wild" any longer. Johnny Law had won the west.
Walt Terry said that Josie was crazy tight with money. They were obsessed with going broke, which, in fact, they had every reason to worry about.
Thanks for the story, Tim. I'm going to rewatch "Tombstone."
Great story Tim. Barstow seemed like a nice little town. A little hot in the summer.
Apaloosa - Brando sleepwalks through the movie wearing a big Sombrero and a big Poncho.
The Poncho is there to hide his big gut, because he was too uninterested to lose weight for the picture.
Brando loved to eat and always had to lose massive amounts of fat for pictures. But at least he wasn't a drug addict or Rummy.
Lee Van Cleef had a contest with Eastwood who could narrow their eyes the most and still act.
Eastwood lost.
Is there an inverse correlation between narrowed eye slit width and crow's feet wrinkle size?
The last question was a math question for Trooper York.
BTW, I can tell from the complete silence regarding the Vandal's song in the front page video that everyone is aware of the lyrical reference to "Zubie's" in Costa Mesa.
About lefty movies -- Fail Safe is on TCM right now.
I always liked High Plains Drifter. Not a Ford classic, but it is refreshing that Clint Eastwood responds to rudeness by a bar girl by taking her in the barn and raping her in the hay (and having the midget watch was just the right touch).
I am not endorsing rape or misogyny in real life, I just like how Clint Eastood did not give a shit about how some might take that scene.
And the character did have it coming. They all did in that movie.
My favorite Clint Eastwood movie is "The Beguiled."
"High Plains Drifter" is all about a ghost that comes back and is evil to cowardly evil people.
Its as if Will Kane was killed by Frank Miller and came back and raped
Katy Jurado, burned down the church, and killed Thomas Mitchell and Lloyd Bridges.
"I am not endorsing rape or misogyny in real life"
That's always nice to know.
There was a crappy movie with James Garner as Wyatt Earp and Bruce Willis as Tom Mix about just the period that Tim was talking about. It was called "Sunset" and was very poorly done.
A great movie could be made from that material.
Wyatt Earp and especially his last wife Josie were tireless self promoters. There were many a gunman and ex-lawmen who had much more compelling stories.
"Wyatt Earp and especially his last wife Josie were tireless self promoters"
I agree. The Hollywood fascination with the "Gunfight at the OK Corral" escapes me.
Bill Tilghman was had a much more compelling story as a lawman and gunman was a contemporary of Earp in Hollywood in those days. He made a few movies but never became anywhere near as famous as Earp. He went back to law enforcement and was the marshal of rough town until he was shot down in the line of duty. He died with his boots on at the age of 70 when he was gunned down by a corrupt Prohibition agent.
A lame TV movie was made about his life starring Sam Elliot.
I always thought his life would make an amazing movie.
Bill Tilghman had the life that Wyatt Earp wished he had and is a footnote in Western history.
If I got the chance to make a movie Western it would be the life of Langford "Farmer" Peel who was a soldier, lawman and gunman. Check out his life story. It would make a hell of a movie.
John Ford always said that if he ever told the truth about Earp nobody would have gone to the movie.
In fact Earp was a gambler and a pimp. As were most of the famous gunfighters and lawmen of the Old West. They couldn't tell the true stories if they were going to make a movie.
"Tombstone" got a lot of the story right but glossed over the fact that the Earps were pimps. The elder brother James was the main culprit but all of the brothers but their woman out on the stroll at one time or another. It is hinted at in "Tombstone" but never made explicit.
If you think life is unfair, wait till you see posterity......I think Hollywood was attracted to the Earps, the James, and Billy the Kid not despite their flaws but because of them. It was always thus.. In the Iliad, Homer gives the best lines not to Hector but Achilles. The only WWII general who got the star treatment was Patton, and he was a total dick. Show me a hero,and I'll show you a dull movie.
The thing of it is that Hollywood would have such a more complex and interesting story if they told the whole thing.
Wyatt Earp was a lot more like Al Swearengen than Hugh O'Brien. But that was too complex for Hollywood back in the day. That is why "Tombstone" missed a bet.
"Tombstone," as I say, was good on atmospherics, and, yes, it hinted. But do you expect it to tell the "whole" story? You'd have no movie.
Look, my whole family were cops in California. Real, actual cops, back in the day. And everybody knew about the "real" old West, because there still were still characters like Walt Terry hanging around in the 40's and 50's. I recall his stories about how tight the Earps were, and how they were a couple of weird, old, sick people, afraid of anyone finding out things, and keeping boxes locked and hidden and moving from place to place. That was the reality at the end: Old weirdos trying to sell stories of their youth to Hollywood while still scared of being found out.
But the gunfight at the O.K. Corral made a great story because it was a set-piece battle. That's about it. And Wyatt Earp was brave and tough on several occasions when he had to be, and was an impressive character in real life. He may not have deserved the attention, but, given the new world of more professional law enforcement and his controversial, checkered past, he was not going to settle into some nice job with a pension. He HAD to be a self-promoter out of sheer desperation. Hollywood bought it, because it was for sale. Other, better, braver lawmen existed, but they were not packaging their stories. They were out being lawmen and maybe getting killed. And meanwhile, Wyatt Earp was beating them as a pitchman.
If Ford were alive today his stuff would be a lot more complex than the rot we get nowadays.
Of course he would have to drop his sentimentality.
Oh everything you say is true Tim but Wyatt Earp was a crook and grifter of the first water.
His last real paying gig was a boxing referee and he helped fix several fights until he got caught at it and run out of the fight game.
A film noir about Wyatt Earp might be done today, but, really, who would go see it? Who would care?
"Tombstone" did about the best they could at the time. But as a modern genre, the Western is pretty much finished.
You could never tell the whole story. That's impossible. But you can tell more of it than they usually do. That's all.
Well I don't know. A TV series would be best and deal with the life and Times of Dodge City as it really happened. That was what Deadwood was and it was great viewing and great TV.
The Western is not dead. It is just not as dominant as it was earlier in the evolution of Hollywood. Much like film nior detective stories it is a genre that it out of style. But it can make a comeback in the right hands.
Hollywood doesn't make Westerns because of the foreign markets. It gets more than 60% of its Box office from overseas. And Westerns have always -relatively speaking - done poorly in foreign markets.
Plus a lot of people in Hollywood were never simpatico with westerns. Too "Middle America" not sexy or cynical or hip enough.
That's why the Western film genre is dead.
But there's no reason why a few good Westerns can't be made every year.
Westerns are still made today, but they're made for TV.
But in order to have a good Western, you have to have good actors who can play men. And today we have too many prissy boys. There are a handful of guys, but not many. And a lot of the character actors are gone.
You know, the interesting thing here is that I never said Wyatt Earp WASN'T a crook. I assumed most people knew he wasn't some shining hero. The blurry line between crook and lawman I thought was pretty obvious in "Tombstone." The whole thing had this confused, messy background of ambiguity. One of the big gripes about the movie was that it had too many story lines and too many unclear characters as it was. It was obvious to me, and part of its appeal, that it managed to be so ambiguous about the Earps. No, it didn't tell the whole story. But it got a lot of the details right, more than any other movie I know. And it didn't paint them as plaster saints, overly hagiographic as it may have been in Wyatt's case.
And, yes, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral happened about like that, even though I'm sure there were many other gunfights in the same year involving honest and brave lawmen, whose stories of six-shooters and moral uplift would better serve to improve the public if only they were known.
Actually very few of the lawmen were these moral paragons that you see depicted on TV or in the older movies.
Most of them were on the other side of the law a time or two.
I think the heroic nature of Wyatt Earp is too ingrained in the public consciousness to be dinged by anything but a very explicit depiction of how bad he really was in real life. The TV show and movies like "My Darling Clementine" and "Gunfight at the Ok Carroll" are the dominant vision of the Earp Clan.
I think the life story of your friend would make a pretty cool movie.
I have about ten great westerns in my head that I could make that might be pretty damn good. About characters as diverse as Farmer Peel, Buckskin Frank Leslie, Sam Bass and most of all Hill Loftis who lived until 1929 and was a hell of a badman.
But alas I will not be directing any movies anytime soon.
You make a great point Bender. There are very, very few actors who would be credible in a Western.
Well at least big name actors. I would go with character guys like Sam Peckinpah did. The equivalent of Warren Oates and Robert Ryan and L Q Jones. And the occasional star long past his prime like William Holden.
Ha ha ha ha that clip Mamie linked I couldn't even watch it beyond "Why you mad?"
They're being attacked by indians, she's shooting high, know it, still shoots high, wastes ammo, wastes time, wastes energy, loses focus, draws attention to herself, "Come on, tell me why you're mad." Ha ha ha ha ha ha, that really captures the female pioneer spirit that won the West, "Why you so mad?" In the middle of a gunfight, ha ha ha ha ha
I loved Tombstone.
And although it's not my favorite Eastwood film, The Beguiled has been unforgettable to me. I'm not sure I'd watch it again, but it's stayed with me.
Don't cross them wimmens, soldier.
So, last evening, I ordered Appaloosa from Amazon and watched it on my crappy computer. Pretty good, but my computer screen is just too dark.
Hi Allen! I'm honored that you gave it a look. :)
Based upon reading your comments for years, I couldn't go wrong.
He lived in two different centuries, but in a way that really was as different as that sounds.
I feel a vast difference between growing up in the 1960s to 1980s and current times. The entire country seems alien to me.
About that fearsome Lee Van Cleef -- he started out as an accountant.
Ooh, scary!
Hey, it was the accountants that got Capone!
I am not endorsing rape or misogyny in real life, I just like how Clint Eastood did not give a shit about how some might take that scene.
Don't forget that the woman in question was later upset that he didn't come back for more. That chick was nuts.
But in order to have a good Western, you have to have good actors who can play men. And today we have too many prissy boys. There are a handful of guys, but not many. And a lot of the character actors are gone.
Not that he makes westerns, but that's one of the best things about the movies Rob Zombie makes--he uses 'real' people--that is, people with deep lines and creases, people that actually look like they've lived some.
I said above in reference to "Tombstone" that "...it got a lot of the details right, more than any other movie I know."
I meant "more than any WESTERN I know."
There are plenty of other movies set in the past with scrupulous attention to detail. But "Tombstone" is the only Western movie I've seen that did such a good job with its Victorian setting. They also did their research about the gunfights in the movie, so what's on the screen bears at least a vague resemblance to the externals of what happened, secretive scumbaggery of characters involved excepted.
Icepick said...
He lived in two different centuries, but in a way that really was as different as that sounds.
I feel a vast difference between growing up in the 1960s to 1980s and current times. The entire country seems alien to me.
Try having grown up in the late 40s to mid 60s.
About that fearsome Lee Van Cleef -- he started out as an accountant.
Ooh, scary!
Hey, it was the accountants that got Capone!
And Doc Holliday was a dentist.
And Van Cleef said he got a lot of jobs because of his eyes and the way they were set in his head.
And I agree with Icepick. It IS a different country.
If you're as old as I am, the Eisenhower Administration of my childhood might as well have been on another planet.
Despite computerization and digital gizmos everywhere, the basic technology hasn't changed as much as it did, say, in the 50 years between 1870 and 1920. We still have similar houses to the 60's, and cars have changed a lot, but not as much as between a horse-and-carriage and a Chevrolet. And we have color TVs, radio, telephones and jet planes. Those have been upgraded and extended, but the basics have been with us for a while.
No, what's changed is the people. And THAT is a whole long other story of both good and bad that I have to ignore for the sake of
a) My sanity.
b) My job. I've got work to do.
About six years or so ago, my brother and I made a trip to Tombstone, Arizona for about a week. Great time. The town itself is set up as a living museum of sorts, sort of an old West Williamsburg. A number of original buildings, markers where important events happened, like "here is where Curly Bill shot Sheriff White".
It's also 1950s hokey at times--there's a mechanical diorama that is a wonder at mid-20th century entertainment. But still fun, plus the surrounding country makes for great hiking and history exploring. Went down to Bisbee for a tour of a copper mine. Went over to Fort Apache where Geronimo surrendered.
The history there gives a bit of the neat and tidy at times, but there's a lot of honesty about the Earps. They were opportunists but had a very Western sort of understanding of justice. Lines are blurry, but that doesn't mean there is no good or evil. The Newspaper accounts at the time, Republican paper for the Earps, Democrat for their opposition, is fascinating for their coverage of the same event with entirely different lens of the action and the people.
The biography by Casey Tefertiller makes for a great read.
Ever notice that the hemlines of togas in gladiator movies varies in length according to the era in which the movie was shot. Thus so with grittiness in the Old West. When I was a kid, I remember Hopalong Cassidy would pony up to the bar and order saspirila. If some prick in a black hat gave him a hard time, Hoppie would quick draw and shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. That's the Old West I remember. And, compared to Roy Rogers, Hopalong was a dark, tormented figure........I think the characters and plots were all in imitation of Tom Mix movies. And Tom Mix really had been a cowboy in the Old West. The stories and characters probably weren't historically accurate, but they were true to what they wanted to believe about themselves.......I think Swearingen's evil is as much a fantasy as Hopalong's purity, but it says something about us that we're more attracted to it and think it more credible.
Excellent comment, Paddy.
One way to get a feel for the rough edges of the time is to read O. Henry's early Texas stories. The Earps, in their way, could have come straight out of an O. Henry tale.
And I just bought Casey Tefertiller's AThe Life Behind the Legend for my Kindle. Thanks for mentioning it. I remember thinking it might be interesting when it first came out, but I've forgotten about it until now. And of course now, Amazon makes it REAL easy to spend that $10.23 to have it at my fingertips to read at lunchtime ;-)
Any thoughts on The Ox-Bow Incident or Broken Arrow?
And someone needs to retell the story of Elfago Baca.
David Atkins did not die until 1967, and David Atkins was a genuine longrider and western badman. Rode with the Ketchum brothers and knew Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in their New Mexico days.
The Ox-Bow Incident is one of the all time commie movies.
Broken Arrow was a lot of fun. Especially with the woefully miscast Jeff Chandler as Cochise.
That is right up there with John Wayne being cast as Genghis Kahn.
Ok, so I didn't know who Elfago Baca was and it was off to wiki --
One often told story says that once when he was practicing law in Albuquerque, Baca received a telegram from a client in El Paso, Texas. "Need you at once," it said, "Have just been charged with murder." To which Baca is supposed to have responded with a telegram saying, "Leaving at once with three eyewitnesses."
That there, is some old west, pardner.
You know, a lot of my friends are into breaking bad and I can't get into it at all. Then again my wife watches Mad Men, so I lose on that front.
Allen-
Robert Loggia played Baca in Disney's The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca which you can watch here.
So, it's Elfego, not Elfago. Did he have a brother that was, well, you know... not that there's anything wrong with that.
PaddyO, I always drive near Tombstone when I'm driving to San Diego in January. I've heard mixed reviews. Based on your take I'll plan on visiting in January. It's only ~25 miles or so out of the way.
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